John II of Portugal

John II of Portugal (Lisbon, March 3, 1455-Alvor, October 25, 1495), nicknamed the Prince perfect He was king of Portugal. He was the son of King Alfonso V the African and his first wife, the Infanta Isabel. John II succeeded his father in 1477 when he retired to a monastery and became king in 1481.

Biography

Crown Prince

As prince, John II accompanied his father on campaigns in North Africa and was knighted after the victory of Arzila in 1471.

In 1473 he married his cousin Leonor de Viseo, from this union two children were born, Alfonso, heir to the throne, but died before his father, and a stillborn. He also had an illegitimate son by Ana Furtado de Mendonça, Jorge de Lencastre, (1481-1550), Duke of Coimbra, founder of the Lencastre family.

From a young age (and surely influenced by the politics of his maternal grandfather, the Infante Pedro), Juan was not very popular among the nobles of the kingdom, since he was indifferent to external influences and rejected intrigues. The nobles, including Duke Ferdinand II of Braganza, feared his future policies as king. The facts proved them right.

Prince Juan participated in the Battle of Toro (1476), in which, according to the rules of chivalry of the time, he was the winner: he defeated part of Ferdinand's army and remained in possession of the Peleagonzalo battlefield, after Fernando's retreat to Zamora and the escape of the king, his father Alfonso, to Castronuño. But politically it was a defeat for Juana's cause, and the Catholic Monarchs were recognized by Alfonso in the Treaty of Alcáçovas (1479).

He also successfully led the naval war (1475-79) against the Castilian fleets that disputed Portugal's African and Atlantic possessions (Naval Battle of Guinea, 1478).

"Principe Don Juan intended the dismissing of the defeat suffered by the Portuguese weapons in Tangier under the head of Infant Don Enrique, embarking on a Moroccan campaign. I didn't want a crown obtained by inheritance or by luck. Before I giggled it, I should deserve it. He would leave, "even when he was without a license from the King his father," and "he threatened those who tried to stop him." The expedition came out of Rastello in August 1471, but it did not leave without the real coming. The father, a fan of the companies thrown, wanted to go too, and he did not miss his presence at the points of danger. Don Juan saw Don Alfonso repenting "so boldly against the Moors, that of the great blows he gave, the sword was crooked, and very full of blood from those who slew and killed." And there, in that field of battle, in the presence of the corpse, still warm from the count of Marialva, His Highness was armed knight, with these pathetic words of King Paladin: — Son, I prayed to God that by his service you will be as good a knight as was Don Joam Coutinho, Count of Marialva, whose body you see lying dead with many wounds that by the service of His Divine Majesty and by ours today. For five years later, the prince sent the Portuguese wing of the Castilians in the battle of Toro, action of which the author of the Speech of the legal and true reason of State speaks (...). The Perfect Prince had attained the supreme mastery in the art of political domination, according to the spirit of times. »

Carlos Pereyra, The Conquest of Oceanic Routes; The Work of Spain in America

King of Portugal

After his official accession to the throne in 1481, John II took a series of measures to stop the increase in the power of the aristocracy and that allowed him to concentrate power in himself. The nobles immediately began to plot; John II did nothing but remained alert. The Duke of Braganza exchanged letters with Isabel I of Castile lamenting his situation. In 1483, this correspondence was intercepted by royal spies. The lands of the house of Braganza were expropriated and the duke himself was executed in Évora.

In the following years, Duke Diego I of Viseu, his cousin and brother-in-law, was locked up in the palace and sentenced to death by the king himself, accused of planning a new conspiracy. Other people were executed or exiled to Castile, including the bishop of Évora who was poisoned in prison.

The king is said to have stated, referring to the rebellious nobles: "I am the lord of lords, not the servant of servants." After these events, the country's nobility did not dare to confront the king. John II was free to govern in his own way without new conspiracies occurring during his reign.

John II restored Atlantic exploration, reviving the work begun by his great-uncle, Henry the Navigator. Portuguese explorations were a priority for the government, which was trying to explore the southern African coast looking for a sea route that would reach India. During his reign the following achievements were achieved:

• Diogo Cão discovered the mouth of the Congo River (1482-86);
• Pêro da Covilhã and Afonso de Paiva were sent on a land expedition as supposed merchants to India and Ethiopia in search of the mythical kingdom of Preste Juan (1487).
• Bartolomeu Dias surrounded the Cape of Good Hope (1487-88);
• Álvaro Caminha began the colonization of the islands of Sao Tome and Principe (1493), which the king ordered to populate with Jewish children torn from their families;

Not all the achievements of the Portuguese expeditions are known precisely since a large part of the archives were destroyed in the fire that followed the earthquake that devastated the city of Lisbon in 1755.

Foreign policy

At that time a series of disputes began between Portugal and Castile over control of the sea. The maritime rivalry between both kingdoms led to the Treaty of Tordesillas, signed on June 7, 1494. This treaty, which defined the meridian of Tordesillas, established that Portugal would keep the eastern part of the world, while Castile and Aragon would be in charge. of the exploration of the western half.

But the division of the world was not the main issue between both kingdoms. Isabella I of Castile and her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon had several daughters, but only one son, Juan, who was in poor health. The eldest daughter, Isabel, married Prince Alfonso, the only son of Juan II, in childhood. If the son of the Catholic Monarchs died without an heir, something that did not seem difficult, Alfonso would be king of Portugal, as well as factitious of Castile and Aragon. The monarchs of these kingdoms sought for the Iberian Peninsula to be unified under the same crown, thus culminating the ideal of the Reconquista that sought the Restoration of Spain. That was the main reason for the marriage. Finally, in 1491, Alfonso died under strange circumstances (a fall from his horse during a race). Juan tried unsuccessfully to legitimize his bastard son, Jorge.

It is during the reign of John II when Christopher Columbus arrived in Portugal seeking financing for his project and also during his reign, the Castilian discovery of America occurred.

On his return from the first voyage, Columbus had to stop on the Island of Santa María, in the Azores, and apparently he was detained by the governor for arriving on a Castilian ship, which made Portugal aware of his return. Later, another storm made him head to Lisbon. These events made Juan II the first European monarch to whom Columbus informed of the discovery; Martín Alonso Pinzón had arrived in Bayonne and informed the Catholic Monarchs almost at the same time.

King John II died without leaving a male heir, on October 25, 1495. He was succeeded to the throne by his cousin and brother-in-law, Manuel. The nickname the Perfect Prince comes from Niccolò Machiavelli's work The Prince. It is believed that John II lived his life according to the idea of the work of a perfect prince, and to his contemporaries he was already known as the Perfect Prince.

Ancestors

Succession

Predecessor: Juana de Portugal and Coímbra	Crown Prince of Portugal 1455-1477	Successor: Alfonso de Portugal
Predecessor: Alfonso V	King of Portugal and Algarves 1477	Successor: Manuel I
Predecessor: Alfonso de Portugal	Crown Prince of Portugal 1477-1481	Successor: Alfonso de Portugal
Predecessor: Alfonso V	King of Portugal and Algarves 1481-1495	Successor: Manuel I